Saturday

. . . and 'they' say it is due to warm up today.  Thank the Lord for that!  I gave in yesterday: I was so cold and miserable after a good dig at the allotment that I turned on the heating and slowly thawed out.  I'm not sure why I was feeling so very cold but I was.  When I went to bed (early), I turned it up and fell asleep feeling toasty warm.  Bliss.

It was a bit of a shock arriving at the allotment.  After a few weeks of neglect it looked shocking so we all set to and dealt with a lot of the weeds.  I shall take the mower down later and deal with the grass edges and it should look a bit more presentable again.  Alex came down too and was a fantastic help, bless him.

To my delight, the redlove that I bought in memory of my dear Aunty May seems to have survived the move really well and has more mini apples on it than ever it did at my place.  Part of that is due to age, of course - it is now several years old and ready to produce more - but also it is because it's in a place where there are loads of other apple trees around.  It's not a self pollinating tree and needs to be pollinated from other trees.  Until now I did the necessary with some blossom donated by a friend but it was all rather hit and miss and only resulted in a very few fruits after the June drop.  Of course there is that to come so we will lose some then but it's looking quite hopeful all the same.

Two of the other three that we moved are also looking quite happy, which is great.  The fourth, a pear, isn't quite so content.  A lot of the leaves have shrivelled up and I doubt there will be any fruit this year.  However, there's new growth from the tips and green leaves there so fingers crossed it was just a survival reaction to stress rather than anything more serious.  I hope so: it was a prolific fruiter last year.

There are two apple trees, a pear and a plum.  They are all 'miniatures' or supposed to be, so we're hoping they won't grow too big.  There's a size restriction on trees but we can see that it isn't that rigorously enforced as we look round the allotments!

And the rhubarb!  Oh, my goodness, the rhubarb!  Just as well we both like the stuff.  Must look up a recipe for rhubarb chutney!

Today's food:
B:  Scrabbled egg on a toasted pikelet
L:  Spag bol
D:  No idea at the moment!